Since only hot water is needed to eat instant fried noodles, instant fried noodles have widely been used.
In recent years, noodles as short as approximately 1 to 7 cm that can be eaten in soup form with a spoon have been increasingly needed to respond to various customers' tastes. Likewise with respect to instant fried noodles, products that meet such needs are required to be made.
However, conventional processes for producing instant fried noodles are mainly used for the noodles having a length of approximately 20 cm to 70 cm. For this reason, applying such conventional processes for producing instant fried noodles, directly to fried noodles having a length of approximately 1 to 7 cm causes various problems in the production processes. Problems occur in the quality of resultant fried noodles as well.
Patent Document 1, for example, discloses a process for producing short fried noodles in which long noodles are fried and then cut into pieces short enough to be scooped up with a spoon.